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Communication skills. Leadership abilities. Emotional and social intelligence. Today, organizations expect a lot from us – both as individuals and team members. Communication proficiency is crucial because it immediately affects our ability to get work done together and thus reach demanding goals.

Thrive on Disagreement
Counter-intuitive perhaps, but conflict – about truly important issues – can actually be beneficial in the workplace. I am referring to the kind of conflict that comes from contrary ideas of substance, not mere personality or style differences. In fact, negative reactions generally emerge from how we express and handle our personal diversity, not the variations themselves.

The conflict may arise because one of the best ways to stimulate creative juices is by rubbing your mind against others’ to produce new and improved concepts and procedures. As differences emerge, we need serviceable conflict resolution skills to manage them well. Then our organization flourishes, not despite the differences but because of them. This process is called “creative abrasion” and “fruitful dissent”.*

Only through sharing differing opinions, beliefs, experiences and goals can any group of people exceed their individual boundaries. Organizations – boards, teams, whole companies – who create ways to make the most of their diversity share a variety of essential characteristics*, such as having common goals firmly in place; basing discussion on facts rather than opinion; developing a wide range of options instead of just a few alternatives, and ensuring everyone feels comfortable speaking up. Not least among the common elements is humour; teams that can lighten up and let off steam among the whole group are also able to disagree, respectfully.

Create Positive Outcomes
Each of us has the power to select our response to people and circumstances. In fact, humans are the only beings on the planet able to separate stimulus from response to choose a reaction: in what manner will we engage, speak, listen, hear, interpret and respond? Our choices shape the outcome of our interactions and create an effect, either positive or negative.

At the most basic level, just the discovery of a different point of view can enable us to see something that had not occurred to us individually. Through sharing ideas openly, focused on what a person’s ideas have to offer – not his or her personality – we are able to generate fewer problems and greater benefits than any one of our preferences might have produced on its own.

Reap the Benefits
Understanding your own and others’ communication and conflict styles can help you to master the strategy of “creative abrasion”, and produce benefits for your organization. For teams, this means increased capacity to manage differences productively; for the organization, it means greater creativity and innovation from the members’ enhanced abilities.

What is “buy-in”? For me, it is when a group of people have worked through the most likely possibilities for their situation, and agreed on what seems to be the best option at the time. You cannot make someone “buy into” your ideas unless you have the communication skills – and maybe conflict resolution capabilities – to illustrate why cooperation with you is in their best interest.

We help our teammates and direct reports – and even those to whom we report – reach this important stage by remembering that it is not change, per se, that people resist. It’s actually the sense of “being changed” that results in most people digging in their heels. Being told what to think about and which perspective to take is a sure way to get my back up. You, too? (Yes, I thought so.)

Furthermore, recognize that any change worth making is bound to generate some resistance, if people are actually thinking for themselves. No push-back means that the change probably isn’t very important. The vital point is whether the people who are pushing back are raising valid points. Are they intelligent, engaged people whose resistance challenges us to search for better answers? If the answer to such questions is yes, then invite the resisters into the tent where they can be useful. They obviously care about the outcome.

So, buy-in is not about swearing undying loyalty to a cause or suppressing one’s own ideas and concerns. For me, buy-in is the flip side of resistance, defined as the “negative expression of an unmet need.”

Self-knowledge is the foundation

The first step in building buy-in is to acknowledge and work with one’s own needs, strengths, and style preferences. And then comes the really hard part – practising what we preach. One of the most important things to understand is one’s pre-disposition toward authority. Do you tend toward counter-dependent behaviour – i.e., resent and rebel; or over-react in the other direction and become strongly compliant? That’s just as damaging. The latter assumes a parent/child relationship, and that does not lead to good business decisions.

If we want to create greater buy-in, the onus ultimately is on me and you, the subordinates, first to understand ourselves to the best of our ability, and then to extend similar understanding to those in the organization who depend on us – above, below and all around.